(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)

comment/tweet of the day​​​​

the PERVERT on the court!!!

Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With the Privileged Kids. She Did Not.

Deborah Ramirez’s Yale experience says much about the college’s efforts to diversify its student body in the 1980s.

By Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly - ny timesSept. 14, 2019

Deborah Ramirez had the grades to go to Yale in 1983. But she wasn’t prepared for what she’d find there.

A top student in southwestern Connecticut, she studied hard but socialized little. She was raised Catholic and had a sheltered upbringing. In the summers, she worked at Carvel dishing ice cream, commuting in the $500 car she’d bought with babysitting earnings.

At Yale, she encountered students from more worldly backgrounds. Many were affluent and had attended elite private high schools. They also had experience with drinking and sexual behavior that Ms. Ramirez — who had not intended to be intimate with a man until her wedding night — lacked.

During the winter of her freshman year, a drunken dormitory party unsettled her deeply. She and some classmates had been drinking heavily when, she says, a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening, laughed.

To Ms. Ramirez it wasn’t funny at all. It was the nadir of her first year, when she often felt insufficiently rich, experienced or savvy to mingle with her more privileged classmates.

“I had gone through high school, I’m the good girl, and now, in one evening, it was all ripped away,” she said in an interview earlier this year at her Boulder, Colo., home. By preying upon her in this way, she added, Mr. Kavanaugh and his friends “make it clear I’m not smart.”

Mr. Kavanaugh, now a justice on the Supreme Court, has adamantly denied her claims. Those claims became a flash point during his confirmation process last year, when he was also fighting other sexual misconduct allegations from Christine Blasey Ford, who had attended a Washington-area high school near his.

Ms. Ramirez’s story would seem far less damaging to Mr. Kavanaugh’s reputation than those of Dr. Ford, who claimed that he pinned her to a bed, groped her and tried to remove her clothes while covering her mouth.

But while we found Dr. Ford’s allegations credible during a 10-month investigation, Ms. Ramirez’s story could be more fully corroborated. During his Senate testimony, Mr. Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ms. Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been “the talk of campus.” Our reporting suggests that it was.

At least seven people, including Ms. Ramirez’s mother, heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge. Two of those people were classmates who learned of it just days after the party occurred, suggesting that it was discussed among students at the time.

We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)

Mr. Kavanaugh did not speak to us because we could not agree on terms for an interview. But he has denied Dr. Ford’s and Ms. Ramirez’s allegations, and declined to answer our questions about Mr. Stier’s account.

Yale in the 1980s was in the early stages of integrating more minority students into its historically privileged white male population. The college had admitted its first black student in the 1850s, but by Ms. Ramirez’s time there, people of color comprised less than a fifth of the student body. Women, who had been admitted for the first time in 1969, were still relative newcomers.

Mr. Kavanaugh fit the more traditional Yale mold. His father was a trade association executive, his mother a prosecutor and later a judge. They lived in tony Bethesda, Md., and owned a second home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. As a student at a prominent Jesuit all-boys school, Georgetown Prep, Mr. Kavanaugh was surrounded by the sons of powerful Washington professionals and politicians. He was an avid sports fan and known to attend an annual teenage bacchanal called “Beach Week,” where the hookups and drinking were more important than the sand and swimming.

Ms. Ramirez grew up in a split-level ranch house in working-class Shelton, Conn., perhaps best known for producing the Wiffle ball, and didn’t drink before college. Her father, who is Puerto Rican, rose through the Southern New England Telephone Company, having started as a cable splicer. Her mother, who is French, was a medical technician.

Before coming to Yale, Ms. Ramirez took pride in her parents’ work ethic and enjoyed simple pleasures like swimming in their aboveground pool, taking camping trips and riding behind her father on his snowmobile. She was studious, making valedictorian at her Catholic elementary school and excelling at her Catholic high school, St. Joseph.

She and her parents took out loans to pay for Yale, and she got work-study jobs on campus, serving food in the dining halls and cleaning dorm rooms before class reunions.

She tried to adapt to Yale socially, joining the cheerleading squad her freshman year, sometimes positioned at the pinnacle of the pyramid. But Ms. Ramirez learned quickly that although cheerleading was cool in high school, it didn’t carry the same cachet at Yale. People called her Debbie Cheerleader or Debbie Dining Hall or would start to say “Debbie does … ” playing on the 1978 porn movie “Debbie Does Dallas.” But Ms. Ramirez didn’t understand the reference.

“She was very innocent coming into college,” Liz Swisher, who roomed with Ms. Ramirez for three years at Yale and is now a physician in Seattle, later recalled. “I felt an obligation early in freshman year to protect her.”

There were many more unhappy memories of college. Fellow students made fun of the way she dropped consonants when she spoke, but also ribbed her for not being fluent in Spanish. They mocked her knockoff black-and-red Air Jordans. They even questioned her admission on the merits. “Is it because you’re Puerto Rican?” someone once asked her.

“My mom would have preferred me to go to a smaller college — looking back at it, she was right,” Ms. Ramirez said. At Yale, “they invite you to the game, but they never show you the rules or where the equipment is.”

It wasn’t until she got a call from a reporter and saw her account of Mr. Kavanaugh described as “sexual misconduct” in The New Yorker that Ms. Ramirez understood it as anything more than one of many painful encounters at Yale.

Ms. Ramirez also did not see herself as a victim of ethnic discrimination. The college campuses of the 1980s had yet to be galvanized by the identity and sexual politics that course through today’s cultural debates.

Years after graduating, however, she started volunteering with a nonprofit organization that assists victims of domestic violence — the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, or SPAN. She became a staff member for a time and continues to serve on its board. Gradually she embraced her Puerto Rican roots.

This awakening caused Ms. Ramirez to distance herself from the past. She fell out of touch with one Yale friend — who had asked Ms. Ramirez to be her daughter’s godmother — after the friend’s husband made fun of a book she was reading on racial identity. The husband, a Yale classmate, was one of the students she remembered being at the dorm party that difficult night.

“If I felt like a person in my life wasn’t going to embrace my journey or would somehow question it,” she said, “I just let them go.”

Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings were wrenching, as he strained to defend his character after Dr. Ford’s searing testimony. Thousands of miles away, Ms. Ramirez, who was never asked to testify, also found the hearings distressing. Her efforts to backstop her recollections with friends would later be cited as evidence that her memory was unreliable or that she was trying to construct a story rather than confirm one.

Ms. Ramirez’s legal team gave the F.B.I. a list of at least 25 individuals who may have had corroborating evidence. But the bureau — in its supplemental background investigation — interviewed none of them, though we learned many of these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the F.B.I. on their own.

Two F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Ramirez, telling her that they found her “credible.” But the Republican-controlled Senate had imposed strict limits on the investigation. “‘We have to wait to get authorization to do anything else,’” Bill Pittard, one of Ms. Ramirez’s lawyers, recalled the agents saying. “It was almost a little apologetic."

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island and member of the Judiciary Committee, later said, “I would view the Ramirez allegations as not having been even remotely investigated.” Other Democrats agreed.Ultimately, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, concluded, “There is no corroboration of the allegations made by Dr. Ford or Ms. Ramirez.” Mr. Kavanaugh was confirmed on Oct. 6, 2018, by a vote of 50-48, the closest vote for a Supreme Court justice in more than 130 years.

Still, Ms. Ramirez came to feel supported by the very Yale community from which she had once felt so alienated. More than 3,000 Yale women signed an open letter commending her “courage in coming forward.” More than 1,500 Yale men issued a similar letter two days later.

She also received a deluge of letters, emails and texts from strangers containing messages like, “We’re with you, we believe you, you are changing the world,” and “Your courage and strength has inspired me. The bravery has been contagious.”

College students wrote about how Ms. Ramirez had helped them find the words to express their own experiences. Medical students wrote about how they were now going to listen differently to victims of sexual violence. Parents wrote about having conversations with their children about how bad behavior can follow them through life. One father told Ms. Ramirez he was talking to his two sons about how their generation is obligated to be better.

Ms. Ramirez saved all of these notes in a decorative box that she keeps in her house, turning to them even now for sustenance. One person sent a poem titled “What Is Justice” that has resonated deeply with her.​“You can’t look at justice as just the confirmation vote,” she said. “There is so much good that came out of it. There is so much more good to come.”

Kremlin-Controlled Russian Bank Hires Trump Insider as a Lobbyist

John Sweeney will be paid to help Vnesheconombank avoid sanctions.

DAN FRIEDMAN - Reporter - mother jones

With Congress mulling legislation to slap new sanctions on Russia for its attack on the 2016 American election, an important Russian bank connected to Vladimir Putin’s government has turned for help to a well-positioned lobbyist in Washington: a Trump insider and former Republican House member named John Sweeney. In August Sweeney signed a whopping contract to lobby on behalf of this bank to stave off sanctions from the US government.

Sweeney, who formerly represented district near Albany, filed paperwork late last month with the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act unit to represent Vnesheconombank, known as VEB, a Kremlin-controlled investment bank. The bank’s chair, Igor Shuvalov, was appointed last year by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who gave him orders to increase funding of national development projects.

The filing says that Sweeney will “engage in meetings and other communications with U.S. government officials regarding potential new sanctions legislation…that could affect” the bank.

The Obama administration sanctioned the bank in 2014 as part of the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Crimea. Shuvalov, along with all members of the bank’s supervisory board, was also included on a January 2018 Treasury Department report listing officials closely affiliated with the Russian government. That report, which Congress required Treasury to issue, did not lead to sanctions against those individuals. But the bank could be hurt by pending legislation. Election security legislation proposed by Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) would sanction VEB and other Russian banks. Sanctions legislation proposed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ), which would bar US firms and citizens from investing in Russian energy projects or participating in ventures that involve Russian government debt, which could harm the country’s ability to finance infrastructure projects. That bill and a separate measure proposed in the House aim at punishing Russia for interfering in the 2016 election.

VEB also had a role in the Trump-Russia scandal. A December 13, 2016 meeting between Shuvalov’s predecessor as the bank’s chairman, Sergey Gorkov, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was scrutinized as part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Disclosure of meeting drew suspicion that Kushner hoped the bank would bailout a debt-laden building, 666 Fifth Avenue, owned by his family. The exact purpose of the meeting remains unclear. VEB claims the meeting was purely business-oriented, related to Kushner’s real estate work. Kushner told Mueller’s office it was diplomatic.

Sweeney was hired to work for Vnesheconombank by the International Centre for Legal Protection, a Moscow entity formed to help Russia and Russian entities enmeshed in complex international legal disputes. The onetime House member will receive $62,500 per month for 12 monthsfor the work, according a contract he filed with Justice Department.

​​Reached by phone Thursday, Sweeney said he would call back, but he did not. He did not respond to a voicemail or questions sent by text message.

Sweeney represented an upstate New York district from 1999 through 2006, when he was defeated for reelection by Kirsten Gillibrand, now the junior senator from New York. In the final weeks of the 2006 race, Sweeney faced domestic abuse allegations (claims that he has denied). In the years that followed, Sweeney twice pleaded guilty to drunk driving charges. Sweeney stopped drinking and recently announced 10 years of sobriety. He also weathered a federal grand jury investigation, into whether he took official acts while in office to help three clients of an Albany lobbying firm in exchange for “a stream of financial benefits,” according to FBI records cited by the Albany Times Union. He was never charged in that case, which lasted from 2006 until at least 2008.

An early Trump backer, Sweeney ledTrump’s successful primary campaign in New York. Sweeney served on Trump’s presidential transition team, helping to vet potential senior national security and intelligence officials, ambassadors, and political appointees for multiple agencies.

Sweeney began lobbying the White House soon after Trump took office. In 2017 and 2018 he worked on behalf of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, a project partly owned by Russia’s state-run gas giant, Gazprom. The pipeline, scheduled to be completed by next year, would transport natural gas directly from Russia to Germany, bypassing Ukraine, which could damage that country’s gas industry. Sweeney’s work, for which he reported receiving $470,000 in lobbying fees, included opposing “potential financial sanctions affecting the project.” Lobbying disclosure forms he filed with Congress say he focused on influencing the “Executive Office of the President.”

​Sweeney has also represented Ihor Kolomoisky, a politically influential Ukrainian tycoon who previously controlled a Ukrainian bank seized by that country’s government in 2016 due to purported lack of capital and financial improprieties. In a lawsuit filed in May, the bank sued Kolomoisky and another former owner, alleging that the men forced it to issue loans to entities they controlled and then laundered the proceeds through shell companies that bought up commercial real estate in the United States. The Daily Beastreported in April that the FBI is investigating Kolomoisky, who has assets in the United States, for alleged money laundering and other crimes. (Kolomoisky has denied the allegations.)

Sweeney is among a small group of Trump insiders who have become lobbyists for Russian firms and related interests. Bryan Lanza, a former Trump campaign and transition aide, is now a lobbyist at Mercury Public Affairs, where he has represented the EN+ Group, an aluminum company founded by Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch close to Putin. Lanza and Mercury helped the company win relief from US sanctions. Brian Ballard, who formerly lobbied for Trump in Florida and has since built a thriving Washington practice, has represented David Yakobashvili, a Russian oligarch with interests in gas and the food industry. Yakobashvili identifies himself as president of the Russian–American Council for Business Cooperation, a group that says it was created at Putin’s behest to boost trade between the countries.

Judge blocks attempt to remove Charlottesville Confederate statues

Statues of Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson will stayLee statue was at heart of deadly far-right violence in 2017

The Daily Progress reported that a three-day civil trial that ended on Friday included a ruling preventing the removal of statues of Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, both Confederate generals in the American civil war of 1861-65.

In August 2017, the planned removal by the city of the Lee statue prompted a white nationalist rally and counter-protests in which a counter-protester, Heather Heyer, was killed.

The statues were covered after the death of Heyer. Judge Richard Moore ordered the covers removed last year.

​Charlottesville residents sued the city government over the attempt to remove the statues, citing a state law that protects war memorials, months before the “Unite the Right” rally of August 2017.

The city said that law violated the US constitution because the statues send a racist message.

Judge Moore ruled on Wednesday that the law’s intent was historic preservation, not discrimination.

“I don’t think I can infer that a historical preservation statute was intended to be racist,” he said. “Certainly, [racism] was on their minds, but we should not judge the current law by that intent.”

The judge issued a permanent injunction preventing the removal.

He also said he would award the plaintiff’s attorneys’ fees but would weigh arguments before determining the amount.

​Construction of a 30ft-high section of Donald Trump’s border barrier has begun in the Organ Pipe Cactus nationalmonument in southern Arizona, a federally protected wilderness area and Unesco-recognized international biosphere reserve.​In the face of protests by environmental groups, the wall will traverse the entirety of the southern edge of the monument. It is part of the 175 miles of barrier expansion along the US-Mexico border being funded by the controversial diversion of $3.6bn from military construction projects.

​This will include construction in Texas, New Mexico as well as Arizona where, according to a government court filing, some 44 miles of new barrier construction will pass through three federally protected areas. These are the Organ Pipe wilderness, Cabeza Prieta national wildlife refuge and San Pedro Riparian national conservation area, the location of Arizona’s last free-flowing river.

The Trump administration has deemed the new structures necessary due to a “national emergency” of unauthorized immigration into the US. According to CBP, in the 2019 fiscal year there have been 14,265 apprehensions in the Tucson sector, where the Organ Pipe wall is going up, compared to 51,411 in the nearby Yuma sector of Arizona and over 205,000 in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

​Yet Organ Pipe is a contentious setting. “What is being proposed is bulldozing one of the most biologically diverse regions of the entire United States,” said Amanda Munro of the Southwest Environmental Center. “Walling off these precious places would be a colossal mistake and a national tragedy.”

“This unneeded, expensive blight will use precious water for its construction, cut off wildlife species from their habitat; and its all-night lights will destroy the clear night skies,” said Kevin Dahl of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Much has changed since the 1970s, when Dahl first visited Organ Pipe as a high school ecology student. At that time the border between the US and Mexico was easily and frequently crossed. “National Park rangers would walk across the border and eat lunch,” said Dahl, motioning to a roadside restaurant in Mexico clearly visible behind the vehicle barriers, reminiscent of the Normandy beaches on D-day, that make up a section of the border.

In the decades since, Dahl has witnessed a dramatic increase in border militarization and barrier construction, including miles of fencing, access roads and a surge of border patrol agents. The new construction will replace pedestrian fences and vehicle barriers, which can easily be traversed by animals, with a 30ft tall bollard wall and accompanying infrastructure. There are fears it will impede migration, cut animals off from water supplies and increase flooding.

“They haven’t thought the design through,” said Dan Millis, the Borderlands Campaign coordinator for the Sierra Club. The slotted barriers have frequently trapped debris during rainstorms, including in Organ Pipe in 2008 and 2011, turning the “so-called porous walls a solid dam”, said Millis. There are also plans to pump water from underground aquifers to make concrete.

“It won’t take much to dry them,” said Dahl, standing amid the willows and cottonwoods that surround the spring-fed pond and provide some of the only shade in an otherwise treeless landscape.

“Pumping water out of the desert at Organ Pipe Cactus national monument, on federally protected land, to support this project is a crime against the American spirit and will do lasting damage to a national treasure,” the Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva said in an email to the Guardian. “Congress has to step in and stop this.”

​The government’s ability to build in protected areas along the Mexican border is unique. A 2005 law grants DHS the power to waive any laws “necessary to ensure expeditious construction” of border barriers. It has been used ever since. The Trump administration has waived numerous state and federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act, to construct barriers in protected areas in every southern border state.

Ongoing litigation by environmental and immigration rights group could halt construction.

Dahl worries it will be too late. Standing near Quitobaquito Springs and looking toward nearby Mexico, he contemplated what is at risk.

“This is one of the true gems of the Sonoran desert,” he said Dahl. “It would be a tragedy if it all was lost for an unnecessary and deadly wall.”

Earlier this week, a long, detailed, receipts-laden report dropped on Jerry Falwell Jr. and his lovely wife Becki, detailing how Falwell was using university resources for his own gain, how he bullied campus staff at Liberty University, and how he often bragged about his sexual prowess to anyone who would listen. Additionally, there were photos of Falwell and his family partying it up (with margaritas and drinks!) at a Miami nightclub, which would ordinarily be no big deal, except that Liberty U has some serious rules about dancing and drinking.

After that report came out, Reuters reported that Falwell Jr. called a student "retarded" and blasted the school's police chief as a "half-wit." Presumably he wasn't doing this while bragging about the size of his penis, but you never know, since he was reported to brag about it to anyone nearby.

Oh, and he reportedly sent photos of his wife in a French maid's costume to a whole bunch of people in a group text instead of just sending them to Ben Crosswhite, his trainer, whom he set up in business with his own private gym. Who does that? Falwell Junior, apparently.

All of these reports have left Junior sputtering and angry. He's demanding an FBI investigation into how his emails ended up in the hands of a reporter but denying nothing. This is, of course, laughable, because he admits there was no hack, and Reuters notes that all of the emails they have came from his personal Earthlink account, not Liberty U's official email. It's all just smoke and mirrors to distract from the grift.

To mitigate the damage, Junior did an interview with Charisma magazine, a fringe evangelical publication, where he explained that Jesus wants him to be a hardcore capitalist just like Jesus would be, if he were alive today.There are just so many things, it's hard to single out one.

On AM Joy Saturday, Frank Schaeffer and John Fugelsang put all of it into perspective. Schaeffer in particular has the credibility, history and the voice to call out Falwell, and call him out he did, first by calling out the whole lot of evangelical grifters.

​"So you know, if you look at Trump's attorney, Jay Sekulow and his family who take in about $230 million a year in contributions and pay themselves out millions, when you look at people like Kenneth Copeland, who's worth $750 million, when you look at Benny Hin, worth $40 million, Jerry Falwell, Jr. Is just another con artist grifter cashing in on 501(c)(3) tax-deductible status," Schaeffer said.

And then he dropped the hammer on Falwell, specifically.

"And then when you look at the present situation, one thing has changed," he explained. "The old con artists like Oral Roberts were glad just to make money, squirrel it away, steal, lie, et cetera, et cetera."

Winding up, he continued, "Now we have Jerry Falwell Jr., and what he wants is access to power, and not just any power, white nationalist power, racist power, power that lies, power that commits adultery, power that has porn artists have to be paid off with checks written in the Oval Office."

"So, it's a step lower than the traditional evangelical white con artist grifters out there," he added. "Now it's con artists married to a neo-fascist, new Republican party that's all about white nationalism. That's what's changed."

Liberty University and the other grifters Schaeffer mentioned need to lose their nonprofit status, as a beginning. Jerry Falwell Jr. in particular is using that nonprofit status to buy real estate and businesses at an unfair advantage in order to set young men up in business whom he also seems to trust with hot pictures of his wife.

John Fugelsang noted, "The great, great achievement of Falwell Sr. was this racket where they've convinced Christians to vote against everything Christ talked about, by talking about abortion, which Christ never talked about."

"This scrutiny is good news, and I hope it's applied to more people because those young people who go to Liberty University deserve better," he said.

We ALL deserve better. Every taxpayer who subsidizes this grift deserves better.

September 14, 2019​By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement - raw story

In a stunning move Attorney General Bill Barr’s Dept of Justice late Friday afternoon filed a 40-page brief with a federal court, declaring the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment inquiry is not an impeachment inquiry, in an attempt to block release of files related to the Mueller probe.

It appears to be an unprecedented act, in which the top law enforcement agency is attempting to block Congress from carrying out its constitutional duties.

The DOJ is attempting to block the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury files, according to Politico. House Democrats have frequently said they cannot make an impeachment decision without the underlying materials from Mueller’s exhaustive investigation.

Bites from Real News *9/14/2019*

*GOP plan to cut Social Security to offset paid parental leave would weaken retirement securityTwo recently introduced bills allowing workers to trade part of their future Social Security retirement benefits for parental leave benefits after the birth or adoption of a child would undercut Social Security’s benefits and structure, weakening the retirement security it offers workers. The United States needs paid leave, but it should not be financed by cutting Social Security benefits.​

*Much “Foreign Aid” Is Taxpayer-Funded Plundering of the Global SouthThe third effort is now afoot. Early this month, Politico acquired a copy of Trump’s proposed presidential policy directive to “redirect, reconfigure, reduce or eliminate foreign assistance that is supporting governments and non-state actors under the strong influence of U.S. competitors and adversaries” (e.g., China, Russia). The draft also says foreign aid should support U.S. economic interests, and should pass to the private sector.

*political fraud!!!: Consultants Are Biggest Winners in Latest Political Fundraising Scheme​And an OpenSecrets analysis of FEC filings found more than a dozen examples of joint fundraising committees diverting a substantial portion of their money away from campaigns. Some spent lavishly for administrative purposes. Others paid large sums to political consultants with whom they were closely connected.

Whistleblower complaint found to be both 'urgent' and 'credible'—but the White House is hiding it

Mark SumnerDaily Kos StaffSaturday September 14, 2019 · 8:55 AM PDT

​House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has issued a press release and a subpoena to the acting Director of National Intelligence over a subject that looks deeply concerning. A month ago, someone inside the U.S. intelligence community filed a whistleblower complaint alleging a “flagrant problem” or “violation of the law.” That complaint appears to have been aimed directly at actions by acting DNI Joseph Maguire. Since that filing, the Inspector General for the intelligence community has looked into the matter and found that it’s not only “credible,” but an “urgent concern.”

A month later, this urgent concern about a flagrant violation is still being hidden by Maguire. The clock ran out for Maguire to release this whistleblower report on Sept. 3. But he did not release it. In fact, he didn’t even let Congress know that there was such a report.

As Schiff notes, even if the original report didn’t allege a violation of the law, the failure to release the report absolutely is a violation of the law. This instance is both extremely serious and utterly unprecedented.

“A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the IC IG determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never. This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct.

Not only is the violation “flagrant,” not only did the Inspector General find it “urgent,” but there’s good reason to think that the whistleblower is talking about action that directly implicates Donald Trump or others in the White House.

​The House only learned about the complaint on Sept. 9 when the Inspector General’s office informed the Intelligence Committee chairs that he was evaluating the report. Schiff immediately requested a copy of the complaint. Even at that point, the matter was far from routine. It’s not unusual for someone to file such a report, or for the Inspector General to take a look. It is unusual for Congress not to be informed that there had been such a report.

When things really started going off the rails was when Maguire refused to hand over the complaint before the deadline. And then the Inspector General declared that the matter was serious, and urgent, and Maguire still refused to produce either the complaint or the evaluation.

Possibly even more concerning are the grounds on which Maguire argued he could do something that no past DNI has done: He refused to produce the complaint by saying it contained “potentially privileged communications.” Which sparked Schiff to issue a new demand for the complaint and this bold declaration.The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials. This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible “serious or flagrant” misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.

Industry coalition launches seven-figure ad blitz to flood Democratic debate with attacks on Medicare for All

September 12, 2019By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams - raw story

A coalition of major insurance companies and drug manufacturers plans to air a series of ads attacking Medicare for All during the 2020 Democratic presidential debate Thursday night, ensuring the event’s commercial breaks will feature talking points from the corporate interests profiting off America’s dysfunctional for-profit healthcare system.

The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), which was formed in 2018 to combat Medicare for All, said it will run ads on both ABC and Univision, the two networks hosting the Democratic debate in Houston, Texas.

The coalition said it also plans to “run advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, as well as a takeover of YouTube’s homepage following the debate.”

​The blitz is part of a seven-figure ad buy aimed at perpetuating the right-wing narrative that Medicare of All would increase Americans’ healthcare costs and income taxes.

The Wall Street Journalreported that the ad campaign shows “industry groups view Medicare for All as a serious threat in a 2020 election.”

​Two out of the three leading Democratic presidential contenders, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), are vocal supporters of Medicare for All and and poll after poll shows it is a popular solution among voters across the political spectrum.

Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would eliminate co-pays, premiums, and deductibles and guarantee comprehensive healthcare to everyone in the U.S.

An analysis published Thursday by the People’s Policy Project showed Medicare for All could cut the poverty rate by 20 percent, and studies have shown single-payer has the potential to save the U.S. trillions of dollars over the next decade.

​PAHCF’s ads make the opposite argument, characterizing Medicare for All as a “one-size-fits-all” program that would hike costs and reduce quality of care.​One of the spots set to air during Thursday night’s debate, titled “Threat,” states without evidence that Medicare for All could “double everyone’s income taxes.”

Anti-Vaxxer Activists Hurl Red Liquid at California Lawmakers

Allison Quinn - Breaking News ReporterUpdated 09.14.19 12:50AM ET

​Daily Beast Cheat Sheet

Anti-vaccine activists threw what appeared to be a menstrual cup full of red liquid at California lawmakers on Friday, prompting an evacuation on the final day of the legislative year. “A few minutes ago, the anti-vaxxer stalkers - who’ve engaged in a harassment campaign all week— dropped a red substance onto the Senate floor from the elevated public gallery, dousing several of my colleagues,” state Sen. Scott Wiener tweeted. “The person who committed this assault screamed it was baby blood. These anti-vaxxers are engaging in criminal behavior,” he said. Several lawmakers were reportedly splashed with the red liquid, and authorities were trying to determine what exactly it was after one of the protesters claimed it was menstrual blood. The protesters had reportedly been watching lawmakers from the public upstairs balcony when the liquid was thrown. Protesters had spent much of the day Friday railing against two bills signed into law earlier this week that will crack down on medical exemptions for childhood vaccines. ​

Companies Tied to Opioid Lawsuits Trying to Block Ohio Judge They Say Is Against Them

​Daily Beast Cheat Sheet

Attorneys for a number of companies fighting opioid-related lawsuits have filed a petition to remove U.S. District Judge Dan Polster from a number of cases due to his alleged impartiality. Cleveland.com reports that lawyers cite an “unusual level of commitment” to settle lawsuits rather than dismiss them in a 39-page brief filed by a number of heavy hitters including Walmart, Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid and several drug distributors. No drug manufacturers are involved in trying to block the judge. “Defendants do not bring this motion lightly,” the lawyers argue, citing a recent class action law suit Polster approved. “Taken as a whole and viewed objectively, the record clearly demonstrates that recusal is necessary.”

Audrey McNamara - ReporterPublished 09.14.19 3:13PM ET

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​Washington representative Matt Shea (R) is facing renewed calls for his resignation from Republican and Democratic lawmakers amid allegations that Shea discussed spying on progressives in the state. Private investigators hired by the Democrat-dominated Legislature are looking to see whether Shea and three others discussed spying on liberals in Spokane, a progressive city in conservative eastern Washington. Shea reportedly named potential targets for surveillance, including a college professor and an organizer for the liberal group Indivisible. According to Signal encrypted chat messages published last month in The Guardian, one of Shea’s co-conspirators suggested “hoisting communists up flag poles.”​A report by The Spokesman-Review, citing emails, showed that Shea compiled dossiers on liberal City Council members from Spokane, looked into buying GPS trackers, and wanted to “turn back the tide” of Islam in the United States. Shea lost a leadership position in the state House last year after admitting he distributed a manifesto that called for killing non-Christian males that don’t follow biblical law.

The US Has “Disappeared” More Than 42,000 Migrants. Where’s the Outrage?

BY David L. Wilson, TruthoutPUBLISHED September 14, 2019

T​he most successful of Trump’s anti-immigrant measures up until now — and possibly the most vicious — hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves.

In operation since late January, Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), originally called “Remain in Mexico,” allows the U.S. government to push most non-Mexican asylum seekers into Mexico once immigration officials have cleared them to make an asylum claim. As of early September, the number of people forced into Mexico under MPP had reportedly risen to more than 42,000.

Immigration authorities say that these migrants are able to pursue their asylum cases while waiting in Mexico, but this is nonsense. It’s difficult for impoverished asylum seekers to get legal representation even while inside the United States; from across the border, it’s virtually impossible. At the end of June, a grand total of 1.3 percent of these asylum-seekers had succeeded in finding a lawyer, according to an August report by the U.S. nonprofit Human Rights First. So far, only one of the applicants is known to have won asylum.

​Moreover, these migrants need a way to live if they’re going to pursue their claims. Many planned to stay with U.S.-based family or friends when they came to this country; in Mexico, they have no support networks. Lacking Mexican work permits, they can at best scrape by with jobs in the informal economy that barely cover the necessities, if that. Some turn to Mexico’s shelters for migrants or homeless people, but the shelters in Mexican border cities are already overwhelmed. Many asylum seekers — including children, pregnant women and people with disabilities — end up sleeping in tent encampments or in the open air.

Even if they find work and shelter, migrants are in constant danger; the only protection MPP offers is in the program’s Orwellian name. For months, asylum seekers have been pushed into cities with high crime rates like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. In July, the program began sending many to Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros, two cities in Tamaulipas state. The U.S. State Department assigns Tamaulipas a Level 4 “do not travel” warning — the same as for Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

In their August report, Human Rights First’s researchers documented 42 cases of rape, kidnapping, assault and/or criminal pursuit affecting migrants placed in Mexico under MPP, and in publicly available materials, they found another 74 cases of violence or threats. The report’s authors said these numbers were “likely a gross underestimate of the harm to returned asylum-seekers given the limited monitoring of the program to date.”

​On September 11, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order allowing the government to go ahead — for now, at least — with another measure against non-Mexican asylum seekers. Like MPP, the new policy keeps the migrants hidden away in Mexico, but it bars them from even applying for asylum. While it’s uncertain what effect this will have on MPP, clearly activists need to fight back against both policies.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind?There’s hardly any information about what happens to people in the MPP program. How many have been victims of crime? Have any been killed? How many have given up and returned to their home countries, and have they become crime victims there? No one knows. U.S. and Mexican authorities aren’t keeping track of these outcomes, and it’s extremely difficult for reporters, immigration lawyers and human rights researchers to get more than anecdotal accounts.

For the Trump administration, this is a feature. The government’s high-visibility attacks on immigrants have often backfired, as happened in June 2018, when the family separation policy provoked popular outrage. MPP may be an even more egregious flouting of U.S. asylum law: It impacts many more people, and it’s likely to have a deadlier effect, but it’s out of sight and therefore — the administration hopes — out of mind.

More than 42,000 human beings legally applying for asylum in the United States have been made to “disappear” into Mexico.

Media outlets have carried some excellent reporting on MPP, and there’s been legal and political pushback. In February, the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the program with a suit (Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan) filed in San Francisco federal court — an action backed by the union for the government’s own asylum officers.Likewise, in August, a group of 24 senators sent the administration a letter calling on it to end the policy. But Trump’s officials aren’t known for responding to reasoned arguments, and in May, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court overturned a stay the San Francisco judge had placed on the program. The supposedly ultra-liberal Ninth Circuit has put off oral arguments in the case until October, leaving tens of thousands of asylum seekers in Mexican limbo. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s September 11 order allows the government to bar new asylum seekers at least until December.

As immigration attorney Shouan Zhoobin Riahi notes, “We need to be organizing large-scale protests against the MPP, Trump’s concentration camps, and the new asylum ban.”

Indeed, the one thing that can turn this situation around is militant activism of the sort that confronted the Muslim ban and the family separation policy. The resistance may understandably be suffering from outrage fatigue, but this is no time to let up the pressure. If activists don’t seize the initiative, the Trump administration will have gotten away with two of its gravest human rights violations to date.

*BOEING'S TRAVAILS SHOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH MODERN CAPITALISM(CAPITALISM)​

*late news of interest*

Black Las Vegas man killed by cops after being stopped for riding his bike without a safety light

September 10, 2019By Matthew Chapman * rAw story

On Tuesday, NewsOne reported that Byron Lee Williams — a 50-year-old unarmed black man in Las Vegas — was killed by police on September 5 after they stopped him for not having a safety light on his bicycle at 6 in the morning.

Officers reportedly pinned him to the ground. When Williams told them he couldn’t breathe, one officer replied, “Yeah, because you’re tired of (expletive) running.”

​Williams passed out as police tried to move him into the squad car. He was taken to the hospital and died an hour later.

This incident marks the latest in a series of deaths of unarmed black men in police custody after stops for minor offenses, which have gained national attention and generated protests in recent years.

September 10, 2019​By Matthew Chapman * raw story

According to prosecutors with U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer, Imperial Valley Ministries — which operates group homes and nondenominational churches around the country — took in homeless people promising food and shelter, only to force them to surrender their welfare benefits and beg for money nine hours a day, six days a week, “for the financial benefit of the church leaders.”

​“The indictment alleges an appalling abuse of power by church officials who preyed on vulnerable homeless people with promises of a warm bed and meals,” said Brewer in a statement. “These victims were held captive, stripped of their humble financial means, their identification, their freedom and their dignity.”